


Gold Teeth and a Curse For This Town

by FoxCollector



Series: Love Is Much Worse [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, Madara leaves the Village, Madara wins, Misplaced Trust, Tobirama might learn a lesson, Trust, but I guess a logical conclusion, kind of sad, playing games with people's hearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-23 03:43:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11981421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxCollector/pseuds/FoxCollector
Summary: “Do you trust me?” Madara asks.And that's a much deadlier question than simply asking if Tobirama loves him.





	Gold Teeth and a Curse For This Town

**Author's Note:**

> So I guess I am making it into a series. Feel free to read these all as separate stories if you want though. This is all a little darker than I was originally planning... Oh well, gotta get out the sads and the angst so I can write more fluff and smut and all that.
> 
> Title comes from The Shins "New Slang".
> 
> There's maybe one or two parts left to write, set after Madara leaves, and I doubt they'll be happy, but hey, sometimes I'm a slut for angst.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Read, enjoy, review!

            “Do you trust me?” Madara asks.

            It’s dark and Tobirama has only just come back into his room, is barely through the door when Madara speaks. He isn’t sure if his entire lack of a reaction comes from his ability to sense Madara’s chakra before he enters the room, or from the fact that Madara has appeared in his room in the middle of the night more than a few times before. Not that he hasn’t returned that favour as well.

            Tobirama slides the door shut behind him and makes his way back to the bed where Madara is waiting for an answer.

            “That’s an odd question to ask in the middle of the night,” Tobirama says.

            “It’s the perfect question to ask in the middle of the night,” Madara counters.

            When Tobirama sits on the bed, Madara reaches out to him. Doesn’t move to touch him, simply reaches out as though waiting for his hand. He isn’t quite sure what to think, and so, curiously, places his hand in Madara’s.

            Madara pulls him to where he has been sitting as he waited, and into his lap.

            It’s unnerving how at home he seems in the dark. Even though this is Tobirama’s space he has made himself a place in the blackness, insinuated himself in like an illness or a predator lying in wait.

            “Well?” Madara prompts. His hands grip Tobirama’s hips firmly.

            It’s not a question Tobirama particularly wants to answer. Trust does not come easily. If he were to say yes, it would be giving away a great deal about himself. But he can’t quite say no. Madara has seen him vulnerable far too many times for that.

            “I think you already know the answer,” Tobirama finally says.

            Madara hums thoughtfully, and Tobirama’s fingers thread in the ink of his hair, barely discernible in the darkness.

            “Was that all?” Tobirama asks.

            There’s something almost hesitant in the way Madara shifts beneath him, as though he wants to ask something else. He doesn’t.

            It probably wasn’t important.

            When they move together, Madara lying down and allowing Tobirama to straddle him, it’s soft. It makes Tobirama nervous. They have been rough, and hot, and Madara has been careful with him before, but never gentle. Never soft. The nervous feeling in his stomach makes his heart throb for years of isolation.  

            If he had to describe it, and he chooses not to, he would say it was closer to making love than anything else. There won’t be any bruises on his hips, but there are already bruises on his heart to make up for it.

            The sentiment drips like venom.

            Somewhere in the middle, when Tobirama is full and his thighs are shaking as he raises himself up, Madara asks, “Do you ever think that there are old things out there? Dark, old things that have almost been forgotten?”

            “Maybe,” says Tobirama. It isn’t a particularly strange thing to say, not since one particular time involving poetry (which was entirely his fault), but it still makes him pause. He plants his hands on Madara’s chest to brace himself so he can lean forward.

            “What business would you have with such things?” Tobirama asks.

            “None,” says Madara, and grips Tobirama’s hips. “None at all.” He rolls them over so he can press Tobirama down and run soft hands over him.

            When Tobirama finally comes he actually feels complete in a way he didn’t think he could. And when he falls asleep in Madara’s arms, it actually feels right.

            He’s on the very edge of sleep, just hanging above darkness deeper than Madara’s black eyes, when Madara kisses the top of his head, and murmurs something that sounds a bit like, “I win.”

            Tobirama dreams about Izuna.

            He dreams about sitting in a wide, red field alongside a river with Izuna and talking, and it’s weird. It reminds him of something Madara showed him once. He hasn’t thought about Izuna in a while. Hasn’t allowed himself to.

            Everything is red. There are red flowers, and red butterflies and the light of the sun glows red off the water, and Izuna’s eyes are red. It’s like blood is everywhere, and Tobirama, for all that he is wearing white and stands out from all the red, is contaminated by it. There’s red in his eyes too, and on his face, and on his hands.

            Izuna doesn’t seem to care. He’s talking about something Madara did wrong and Tobirama has no idea what he means.

            The sun sets, and when the moon rises, that’s red too.

            When he wakes up, Madara is gone.

            Completely gone.

            Hashirama tells him he left the village in the middle of the night. Tobirama doesn’t even know what to make of that. Hashirama puts a hand on his shoulder, his expression says that he knows more than he is saying, and Tobirama doesn’t know if that means he’s holding something back about Madara, or doesn’t want to let on to the fact that he knew about them.

            “Are you okay?” Hashirama asks him. Because he has always had a sixth sense for Tobirama’s injuries.

            “Are you?” Is all Tobirama manages to say.

            Hashirama gives him a look. “Of course not.”

            “Oh.” Tobirama opens his mouth to say something else. And then closes it. What else is there to say?

            He just knows there’s a hole in his chest that is wider than it was before. And it aches.

            Before, it only ached from the loss of his brothers, his family. Now, there’s a sharp ache around the edges; they’re scraped raw from where Madara took part of him. He has never been hurt so intimately.

            He isn’t stupid. He can connect the dots. Most of them anyway. There are things about the depths of Madara’s mind he will never guess at. But he knows. Somehow, it’s his fault. Somehow, he’s been played.

            _I win_.

            He hadn’t been aware that it was a game.

            The next night he sits with Hashirama in his office, because Tobirama doesn’t want to go back to his own room and Hashirama has been avoiding home for the last few days. Neither of them want to be there. Not yet.

            Hashirama seems angry about something, and sad, and there are lines around his eyes that speak to a bone deep determination and practicality that were never there before. Tobirama is struck by the fact that he didn’t notice these changes earlier. He thinks maybe he was a little too distracted with things he shouldn’t have been.

            There isn’t much to say between them, and that hurts. But maybe that’s on him as much as Hashirama. He hasn’t been completely honest with his brother in a long time. He feels a little cut off.

            So instead of talking about anything, they sit there. Comfortable, at least, in each other’s presence.

            Outside, there is an aura around the moon, faint red, and the moon hangs heavy in the sky, dragged down by it. Pregnant with trouble. Probably something big is going to happen. Tobirama doesn’t know what; he’s too tired to worry about it.

            He does know a few things though.

            He knows Hashirama is carrying a burden he won’t explain or share.

            He knows he’s had his chance for happiness, and maybe he’d thrown it away before he’d even known it was possible.

            And he knows that he will never love again.

            There will only be him, and that moon.


End file.
